Read the latest IT news, tips and insights from IT Support pros at HTL Support

DDoS attacks are typically designed to inundate servers and entire networks by consuming computing resources through large volumes of traffic, connections, or requests. And so, because cloud infrastructures are assumed to be backed by a large assemblage of such resources, many people believe their servers are less susceptible to these types of attacks if they’re hosted in the cloud. But that’s not entirely true.

If your servers are hosted in a multitenant environment along with a bunch of other servers belonging to other organisations (which is usually the case in a public cloud), your servers could be at risk of collateral damage. If those other servers (note: not yours) are bombarded by a DDoS attack and your cloud service provider (CSP) attempts to absorb the attack, your own servers, which share the same underlying infrastructure with those other servers, could also suffer.

Web content filtering is typically supplied as part of broader cybersecurity measures, with most internet security appliances offering the option to enable filtering, and many default configurations enabling it from the outset. Yet as with many topics in information security IT personnel should never assume that content filtering features are active or optimised. In this article, we outline key reasons why content filtering is still so important, and briefly describe how to enable content filtering for your organisation.

HTL Support's Business Briefing event on 23 February was a resounding success and offered delegates real insight into the EU General Data Protection Regulation legislation and its likely effects on the IT sector. Demand for the event was far in excess of available places and is an indication of just how relevant the impact of GDPR is to anyone working in IT.

Love it or hate it, IT departments cannot prevent users from engaging with Wi-Fi networks; the convenience factor is simply too high. The IT security risks are real, however, whether your users are roaming – or using Wi-Fi where you have some control over internet security, such as the office space. It is also an evolving threat, with the gold standard of Wi-Fi security, WPA2, losing its shine. In this article, we discuss the next generation of Wi-Fi security, WPA3, and the measures you should currently be taking to boost your company’s Wi-Fi security.

With the losses associated to cyber crime expected to hit around $6 trillion by 2021, security has become a top priority of many businesses. These companies diligently implement compliance initiatives in hopes that they can ensure security within their organisations. But here’s the thing: achieving compliance doesn’t necessarily mean that your business is fundamentally secure.

Last year, Verizon published a report that revealed a major eye opener regarding compliance. According to that report, 45% of PCI DSS certified customers needed remediation. Meaning that these businesses still needed to improve their security controls in order to be considered secure as per PCI DSS.

It’s important to note that these businesses actually already passed a previous compliance audit. In fact, they were certified to be fully PCI DSS compliant. In other words, they had already spent a considerable amount of time, attention, and money establishing IT security controls that met PCI DSS requirements.

The cyber threat landscape continues to evolve and in order to maximise your cyber security budgets, and position resources where they are most needed, you need to know what threats are most likely to make an impact in the near future. To help you, we’ve put together a list of what we believe are going to be the top 4 cyber threats in the UK this year.

Let’s say you’ve already invested a fortune on network security. How do you determine that investment’s effectiveness in preventing a data leak or withstanding a deliberate cyber attack? Your best option would be to conduct a penetration test or pen test.

Although cloud security is often brought up as a major issue in cloud adoption discussions, there still remain a few misconceptions that need to be corrected and clarified. In order for businesses to make the right steps in securing their cloud-based digital assets, they need to distinguish the myths from the facts. This blog post can help in that regard.

These are some of the basic things you need to understand about cloud security.

The prevalence of firewalls and anti-virus software has closed many of the common attack vectors that cyber criminals use to gain unauthorised access to networks and to bypass online security. For this reason, attacks increasingly rely on fooling users into allowing access to systems: legitimate-looking emails that easily clear the common-sense hurdle can hide malware and well-planned hacking attacks.

Even with the necessary protections in place it is surprisingly easy to “spoof” an address, with a from field that looks correct in every way; except for the fact that the sender is not who it appears to be. Most users will think twice about opening an attachment sent by an unknown sender, but if the attachment appears to be from a colleague the usual caution is sometimes left by the wayside.

Of all the types of malware wreaking havoc these days, one clearly stands out - Ransomware. This troublesome malware appears to be gaining a lot of fans in the cybercrime community and has, in turn, caused considerable stretches of downtime on a large number of organisations.